How to create an advanced quote system in monday.com

For event management businesses and others of the same nature, providing quotes to prospective clients is a core process and part of the day-to-day operation. Handling the task seamlessly is of utmost importance.

However, even to this day, many still struggle in dealing with multiple spreadsheets and accessing several applications just to send one quote.

To do away with such time-consuming manual steps, monday.com can help you provide quotes to your clients less the hassle. It can integrate with an accounting system to automate all the processes from the quote generation in monday.com to the invoice management in Xero or QuickBooks. The integration will be made possible using Make (formerly Integromat).

With such a vital process in the company managed efficiently, you can focus on providing the service to your client instead of losing time doing things manually.

I will guide you in this article through the processes on how to do it.

how the quote system works

Before getting on to the details of creating the quote system, I’ll give you a brief overview of how it will work.

This all starts with a prospective or an existing client who will send a service request to you filling a form with relevant information such as the event type, event duration, and others that will affect the price.

A dedicated board is created for this prospective client or a board has already been created for an existing client.

With the details provided, a quote is then automatically generated and is available for review by your team.

The responsible team will receive a notification to review the event details and create the formal quote. This is made possible by setting up an automation in the monday.com board of the client.

What the team will check is whether the information provided by the client is accurate and priced accordingly.

After the team has confirmed that everything is correct, they’re now ready to send the price quotation to the client. The sending of the quote will all be triggered from the monday.com board.

The client will receive a link to the quote and is also notified about it. The person can then accept or reject the quote provided.

All the processes mentioned happen without the account manager leaving the client’s monday.com primary board.

Now, let’s get to the details in creating the advanced quote system:

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configure THE PRIMARY BOARD

This is a client-dedicated board where you’ll manage the projects for a specific client. You have to incorporate here (on the columns) all the necessary details that you want to include in the price quotation.

Apart from the data columns, this is where you’ll incorporate columns to trigger actions to fulfill different steps needed in getting a quote sent to a client.

The image above shows a “status” column where actions can be triggered. For instance, “Create Quote” and “Create Invoice.”

In configuring the primary client board, you would need these basic columns:

You may add other columns that are relevant to your business setup.

create different boards for resources

The next step is to create different boards for your resources like the pricing list in one or several currencies. On each board, you have to add different columns that will contain the information for each pricing item.

Using equations and connections among other boards, subitems, and items – the quoting system is prepared.

connect systems using Make (formerly Integromat)

To create the connection of monday.com and the invoice management system like Xero, Make (formerly Integromat) is in charge of moving the data between them. You need to have an account with Make (formerly Integromat) to do this.

Thanks to its versatility and the existing modules, the quote details from monday.com can be easily synchronized on the required fields in Xero.

Once the quote is generated in Xero, the link of the document will be available on the client’s board dedicated “link column.” Then, the client is informed. As mentioned, this is where the client can accept or reject the quote.

Setup Automation

After the boards are configured and the connection of monday.com and Xero is established using Make (formerly Integromat), you’re now ready to add your automations.

These are sample automation recipes:

“If Status (Client Actions) changes to Client Approves, notify Scheduling Team”

With this automation recipe, the team in-charge of scheduling is notified. For a detailed process on setting up automation, you may want to read this article.

“If Status (Business Actions) changes to Job Completed, notify Account Manager:

Once the job is completed, the account manager is notified for the generation of the final bill. The process is similar to the creation of quotes.

On a column where actions can be triggered, it should have “Create Invoice” that must be selected to create an invoice in Xero. The payment link will be sent to the client who will then also get a notification about it.